Finished up
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 late last week. The biography was great! If you want to start a journey into the roots of how change came to be in the mid 20 century up until now, read Lewis's second volume about DuBois.
I breezed through
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King on Monday and Tuesday. As it tied directly into the Dark Tower series, it held my attention the entire way. I'm thinking of having my parents read it and get their opinion on King's thought on his (and their) generation - promise, tragedy, hope and all that jazz.
On Saturday I went to the used bookstore in downtown Detroit (if you're ever in the city for a day, make it a priority to go to John K. King Used and Rare Bookstore!) and picked up two books with the parchment gift certificate (another reason to go, they're just that cool) that was set to expire. Had been searching for a bit, my girlfriend had already found six different books about music and teaching she wanted, and I had none. Finally went into the last section that looked interesting and started rummaging around. Found one book that was ok, and which happened to mention Gunnar Myrdal's An
American Dilemma on the back cover. I started explaining to my girlfriend what Myrdal did, how he got the job to put all of this social research together that W.E.B. DuBois had really wanted to do, but the Carnegie foundation didn't want him to...her eyes glazed over and she happened to look up and said "hey, isn't that the book you're talking about?"...and holy crap it was!
Only part of a chapter in so far. Thus far it seems like if you want to be simultaneously hopeful, depressed and yet still want to know more about the American system of democracy, ideals and everything else and how blacks are/were oppressed by whites with a point of view of how what and maybe even why whites think that way and how it might be overcome....read it! And thats only from reading the preface intro and part of the first chapter.
